


and you call this divine retribution

by scisallison



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Flashbacks, I don't want to talk about it don't look at me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 20:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scisallison/pseuds/scisallison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jennifer Blake believes the emissaries were the overlooked. A lifetime ago, Julia Baccari was anything but.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and you call this divine retribution

To her pack, Kali is her namesake—destruction and death follows at her heels like her faithful thralls if she so wills it, and the ferocious internal urge to protect is a constant blaze. She is an inferno that even the male majority knows better than to cross, even if she weren’t comfortably seated at the top of their hierarchy.

Julia Baccari holds the depths of the open ocean in her stare, and Kali finds the connection fitting—mysterious and often unattainable in its entirety, but eternally seeking out the shoreline for the passerby in need of guidance. Kali knows all too well that those calm waters can easily give way to a tempest that chills her to the bone; and for once, it’s so very satisfying to find herself on a level playing field. In closed rooms after midnight hunts, clear blue eyes extinguish the flames until there’s nothing left but new earth, the promise of creation in the midst of the collateral damage that plays on the tips of Kali’s claws like a second nature. 

Firm and unmovable, Kali is always earth incarnate once the smokescreen clears, and Julia never fails to run her fingertips across the map of her skin with all of a druid’s righteous devotion.

It’s Kali’s lips roaming her neck that solidifies her loyalties, claiming her in a way that no Alpha sigil or honor-bound oath could ever hope to. The forgotten spark glimmers under the surface and threatens to ignite once more as Kali’s fangs graze the juncture of her collarbone, but Julia doesn’t mind. It’s no less driven to consume what’s in its path, but it’s a slow burn rather than a wildfire—and she knows these moments are for them alone.

Emissaries are meant to serve, and the whispered cries Julia buries into Kali’s skin are nothing short of reverent. She whispers her name like a promise, like a plea, like the sweetest offering.

—

Her pack is slaughtered.

Julia lets her lead-heavy feet carry her to the old Nemeton, with every body—no, corpse—she passes sending yet another fissure through her fragile heart. (It’s no longer the place of endlessly read, worn-through Brontë novels with thoroughly cracked spines and an endearingly familiar scoff sounding from over her shoulder as Kali reads along—no, underneath of the thick haze of denial, she knows what’s coming.) She doesn’t stop to look, doesn’t stop to identify which member of her adoptive family she has lost. She’s lost all of them—all except one.

The sight that greets her is expected, but no less jarring. Kali’s bloodstained body stepping out into the clearing delivers a numb shock once it registers.

(This time, Julia doesn’t have to ask about the victims.)

Kali’s right hand reaches out, settles itself against the left side of Julia’s face, molds into the contour of her jawline like it has a flesh memory. Julia hates the familiarity of the contact, hates that love interfered with duty, hates that the _woman_ she loved had sent her entire life crashing to the ground in a matter of hours. And she hates that every past-tense verb she forces her mind to use doesn’t quite feel right. 

She isn’t so pathetically naïve as to search for an apology in the dark eyes that carefully watch her, but she still scours their depths for an explanation. All of the wide-eyed wonder fades in those few seconds. Kali’s pedestal is crumbling in plain sight of her sole witness, and Julia comes to the realization that all of her prayers to a false idol have done her no favors and _this_ is the only thing that’s real. The shattered remnants of a home. There’s no closure, no reprieve, for what Kali’s done—for what she plans to do—and only the lovestruck fool that Julia's battered into submission in the pit of her heart would dare to seek it out. For the first time, the sea trapped within Julia’s irises gives way to frigid, unforgiving ice, and neither of them say a word. All that remains are twin aches and frayed heartstrings.

Nails sharpen into claws and ghost against her temple. Kali’s mouth tightens at the corners; her eyes snap shut and the moment is over. Julia wants to back away. 

She doesn’t.

If she shuts her eyes too, it’s almost a caress.

Until it isn’t.


End file.
